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Phys. Rev. D 74, 106001 (2006) [9 pages]

Low energy bounds on Poincaré violation in causal set theory

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Nemanja Kaloper and David Mattingly
Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA

Received 1 August 2006; published 7 November 2006

In the causal set approach to quantum gravity, Poincaré symmetry is modified by swerving in spacetime, induced by the random lattice discretization of the spacetime structure. The broken translational symmetry at short distances is argued to lead to a residual diffusion in momentum space, whereby a particle can acquire energy and momentum by drift along its mass shell and a system in equilibrium can spontaneously heat up. We consider bounds on the rate of momentum space diffusion coming from astrophysical molecular clouds, nuclear stability and cosmological neutrino background. We find that the strongest limits come from relic neutrinos, which we estimate to constrain the momentum space diffusion constant by k<10-61  GeV3 for neutrinos with masses mν>0.01  eV, improving the previously quoted bounds by roughly 17 orders of magnitude.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.74.106001
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.74.106001
PACS:
11.25.Mj, 98.80.Cq, 98.80.Qc